The Hollow Men
by Hel-Lokisdotter
Summary: You don't have to die to lose your life. A quick look at a plague survivor. Title and inspiration both taken from TS Eliot's massively overquoted poem of the same name.


The day the world ended, she was sitting outside in the sunlight, curled up in a wicker chair with a copy of _Lord of the Rings_ open on her lap. A Wagner cassette played on her Walkman, and there was a glass of lemonade resting on the step next to her.

Inside, her sister was practicing the piano, badly. Still comfortably curled into herself, she frowned, glared over at the open window, and turned up the volume. _Ride of the Valkyries_ blasted into her ears, as loud as any hard rock, and she turned her attention back to the Fellowship's battle to hold Gondor.

Just as the Rohirrim were sweeping in to save the day, a crashing discord made her jump half out of her skin. The wind was rising slightly, and the sun, for a moment, had gone behind a cloud. Made irritable by this intrusion into her comfortable peace, she shoved the book down onto the step, not caring how much she bent the spine, ripped her headphones out, and stormed over to the window. Shoving her head inside, she folded her arms on the sill.

"Shut _up_!" she snapped. "Mom's got a headache, remem…ber? Oh, _Jee-_sus, not you too."

Clambering in through the open window, as she had been doing since she was a child, she grabbed her coughing sister under the arm, pulling her away from the piano. "Come on, Soph, stop playing around. If you're that ill, go to bed, for Christ's sake."

"I'm going, all right?" Sophie managed to choke out. "It's just hayfever or something. Geez."

Kate was inclined to agree. But she still found herself following her twin upstairs, worried despite herself.

Outside, the wind gusted, knocking the glass over. Lemonade spread over the book, making the ink bleed into illegibility.

_This is the way the world ends._

Heat seemed to fill the room. Or maybe it was only Sophie's hand in hers, hot enough to scorch. Kate put a hand over her eyes, her short brown hair falling over her face.

"Where's Mom? Is she okay?" Sophie asked hoarsely, and Kate looked up sharply, eyes glittering with unshed tears.

"She's… sleeping." Sleeping in the back yard. Sleeping under three feet of compost and prized roses, next to where you buried the hamster when you were six. Oh, Sophie. She's sleeping.

"Good," Sophie replied, not seeing any of it in Kate's eyes. "I wish I was."

_No_, Kate wanted to scream. _This isn't how it goes! You were going to be a lawyer, remember? You were going to marry and have two and a half children, a dog, a cat, a white picket fence. And we were going to grow up, get past all the pettiness, like they always say. It's just a stage. It's just a stage. A twin's the best friend you'll ever have!_

(_It's genetic_, a voice whispers in her head, like a memory of a dream. _It's genetic, the resistance_, but _she_ hasn't got the flu yet, has she, and it should have taken her by now. She wishes it had)

"Is Dad back yet?" Sophie asked, quietly.

Kate shook her head, biting her lip.

"Good. I don't want him to…" And she lapsed into silence, her hot hand, sweaty and speckled with flaking purple nail varnish, tightening around Kate's.

Kate shook her head again, unwilling to watch, unable to look away. Sophie's throat, blackened and swollen, pulses with the effort of drawing breath, and the room is filled with rattling, phlegmatic pain.

"Kate?"

"M-hm?"

Sophie's chapped, sweat-covered lips draw back in a parody of a smile.

"You know your prom dress? It's in the back of my wardrobe. I couldn't get the wine stains out of it."

_This is the way the world ends._

And now she curled up in the wicker chair again, watching the river. She had dragged the seat all the way out here, unable to stay at the house, where the twin mounds in the garden seemed to be glaring at her, accusing her. Her books, her clothes, her paints, were all piled in the boxes next to her.

The water rushed past. Dry-eyed, she watched it go.

She wasn't a survivor. She knew that now. The old Kate Harker, the misty-eyed, dreamy fantasy freak who chose contacts over glasses because they made her look less geeky, who cried in the bathroom when John Davies had turned her down as a prom date, who failed Games every semester – she was no survivor.

She had to go.

Every last thing which made her Kate Harker had to go.

Then, maybe, she might be free.

_Lord of the Rings_ went first, the lemonade-clotted pages fluttering like wings in the dark water. Then her Wagner tapes, floating like liferafts on the choppy surface. The jeans she wore on her first ever date, the earrings bought on their family trip to New York, the Van Gogh print her grandma had left her, all flowing downstream in a great tide.

Last of all, she reached into the only other box, pulled out a blue dress with a dark crimson stain on the skirt. Dragging it on over her sweat-stiffened teeshirt and damp cutoffs, she felt, just for a moment, like another person. Somebody strong. Somebody beautiful. Somebody who could fight this thing, this demon, whatever it was, and come out quits.

_This is the way the world ends…_

Stepping carefully, barefoot on the shingled beach, she watched the water close over her head like the pool of tears in Wonderland, distant and blessed. Her skirt billowed about her, and the current caught her like a gale.

Chest burning, she closed her eyes. Her brown hair floated like weed; the water dragged at her leaden limbs.

And, for the first time, she let herself cry.

_Not with a bang, but a whimper._


End file.
